MOVING OUT

My daughter, Carly, starts graduate school at The College of William and Mary in one month.  This is the same school where she just completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology and lived in a different dorm for those three years.  This meant that we moved her in and out of dorm housing six times. This year she found an apartment to share with two other friends (which is by the way NOTHING like my first apartment when I was still an undergraduate student at Old Dominion University. It is also so much better than my first condominium I rented the first year I started working!).  And it just hit home about thirty minutes ago that even more of her things (now even some bedroom furniture) were gone.
 There are so many emotions that have gone along with this move. While I am so happy that the apartment is clean, bright and spacious and also elated that her dad and I are able to help her out so much, it is definitely different and even a bit gloomy to see her move out this year.  I know she can return here next summer, but that isn't our hope for her.  Ray and I hope to see her finish school and either move her things back here while she is teaching overseas on a scholarship OR move her to another place near her first teaching job (so either way, we get to move things again next summer).  We sent her to the apartment with living room furniture, dining room furniture (it was my parents furniture that I had moved to our lake house a year ago, so I still have more here in this house--oy vey!) and some of her bedroom furniture.  We are, of course, downsizing with the hopes of not taking anything but suitcases with us to Panama.
We are excited for our future and to see what happens with us next.  And we are even more thrilled for Carly's future, also, but with that comes her growing up more and separation from us more.  So while it was wonderful to see our things get settled into her amazing apartment (which also gives her comfort in her new place to have familiar things), and to see her enthusiasm with her roommate and ready for the next chapter in her life,  it has been a tad bit solemn for me.